After I saw Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and loved it, many people asked me if I saw Ip Man. I hadn’t even heard of it, which shocked people, but hey, I’m only one person. I put any movie with Ip Man in the title in my queue and still knew nothing about the movies. When one of those movies was about to expire on Netflix, one that had nothing to do with Donnie Yuen’s then trilogy, now quadrilogy (another Ip Man film will be released in 2019), I decided to finally buckle down and watch all the movies in one sitting naturally starting with Ip Man.
Ip Man is not just any martial arts film. It is also a bio pic and period piece which is loosely based on the life story of the titular character, Bruce Lee’s instructor. It covers 1935 through 1938, which includes the period during World War II when the Japanese invaded China, including Foshan, which is where Ip Man was from.
Ip Man works as a standalone movie and as the strongest of the franchise. It is simple enough for acolytes such as myself to get on the ground floor and become interested in this man’s story. It feels like an origin story for a reluctant vigilante. He is depicted as the epitome of being a Chinese man. He loves his wife. He is a good father. He is humble and generous, strong and restrained, peaceful but willing to defend others. He is simultaneously a relatable everyman facing difficult circumstances during an invasion, but also the ideal because he acts in the noblest possible way regardless of the circumstances. Even his flaws are admirable.
Ip Man’s story is perfectly paced with increasingly difficult challenges that he must overcome. Characters that casually appear earlier are memorable enough so when they reappear later, I still remembered them. When they do appear, they enhance the story because their knowledge or skill act as a bench marker for us to compare a new character’s abilities or enhance our view of Ip Man when he makes better choices or is able to succeed when they do not.
It appears that each Ip Man movie has two villains: a minor one that is not so bad and under different circumstances, could be a decent person and a major one that is so repugnant that he must be completely defeated to restore the dignity of those whom Ip Man defends. Unsurprisingly because this film is set in World War II, the major villain is Japanese General Miura who has a number of sadistic, violent, rapey underlings.
At this point in the movie, Ip Man enters the deliciously delightful subgenre of movies that reimagines history the way that we wish it was similar to movies such as Inglorious Basterds, Overlord, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Ip Man is one hour forty-six minutes long with a ton of fight scenes and fairly good drama and character development so it works equally as a drama and an action film whereas many action films make the drama feel like filler just to get to the fight. When we are fifty-six minutes into the film, Ip Man finally gets mad, and the movie completely had me invested in slight, understated moments such as the way that he adjusted his clothes and the big elaborate ones that signified that Ip Man was not playing any more and was done! He was big mad and about to whoop some ass. I loved it!
Donnie Yuen is really a great actor and martial artist. The emotional transformation from reluctant, shy, secret bad ass to avenging every man was completely credible. In spite of his incredible performance, it is ridiculous that I’m supposed to believe that he is not eating enough, but can still throw down. Take the damn rice! When he stops working his day job to become full time vigilante man of the people, I knew that he wasn’t getting paid so how are you financially supporting your family? I let it go and could still enjoy the movie, but when people are watching these movies, I’m not concerned about people getting physically hurt trying to emulate heroes. I’m worried that they think movie finances work the same in real life. You can’t maintain your physical prowess without food, and you can’t get food without money, especially if people offer you lunch, and you turn them down.
Ip Man was Jesus with hands. I didn’t have a problem with the heavy-handed morals of Ip Man, but if someone critiqued and rolled their eyes at how over the top perfect he was, I couldn’t push back. I considered the violence fairly tame, but I have a very high threshold. People get shot and killed. There are no rape scenes, which is a relief, but shocking because the Japanese military in China during World War II were infamous for their brutality against women. I saw one critic state that the depiction of Japanese was over the top. Ummm, I found it restrained. Nanking, anyone? Knowledge is free as long as there are libraries.
I loved Ip Man and highly recommend it to anyone interested in martial arts films, especially if you’re shockingly ignorant like me and did not know of Donnie Yuen before Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. There are subtitles, but there is not so much lengthy dialogue that you will find it too taxing. The relationship between the historical figure and the cinematic invention of Ip Man is probably as wide as the Grand Canyon, but I enjoy the cheesiness of this film promulgating values like an old-fashioned superhero movies.